Valentin Klotzbücher

Welcome to my personal website!

I am an economist and applied statistician, living in Basel and working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Freiburg. I am always open to connecting—feel free to email me, schedule a meeting, or explore my CV. I’m also interested in new opportunities and happy to discuss potential roles.

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I believe that unbiased, quantitative analysis is essential for informed decision-making and the key to meaningful progress. My research focuses on high-frequency, non-traditional data sources to uncover public health trends and support evidence-based crisis response.13 I have also worked on the political economy of terrorism and organized violence,4,5 contributed to meta-science studies,6,7 and I support The Unjournal in commissioning independent evaluations of high-impact research.8

Currently, I am teaching a course in Microeconomics and a seminar on reproducible research with R and Quarto. Moreover, our “Meet a Boss” lecture series is now open to registered external guests - send me an email if you want to attend!


1.
Brülhart, M., Klotzbücher, V., Lalive, R. & Reich, S. K. Mental health concerns during the COVID-19 pandemic as revealed by helpline calls. Nature 600, 121–126 (2021).
2.
Brülhart, M., Klotzbücher, V. & Lalive, R. Young people’s mental and social distress in times of international crisis: Evidence from helpline calls, 2019–2022. Scientific Reports 13, 11858 (2023).
3.
Armbruster, S. & Klotzbücher, V. Lost in lockdown? COVID-19, social distancing, and mental health in Germany. Covid Economics: Vetted and real-time papers 22, 117–153 (2020).
4.
Klotzbücher, V., Krieger, T. & Meierrieks, D. Class warfare: Political exclusion of the poor and the roots of social-revolutionary terrorism, 1860-1950. Defence and Peace Economics 32, 6681–697 (2021).
5.
Klotzbücher, V. & Schulze, G. Terror and tourism. Handbook of the Economics of Terrorism (forthcoming).
6.
Huntington-Klein, N., Pörtner, C., et al. The sources of researcher variation in economics. (2024).
7.
Brodeur, A. et al. Comparing human-only, AI-assisted, and AI-led teams on assessing research reproducibility in quantitative social science. Institute for Replication (I4R) Discussion Paper 195, (2025).
8.